biblical worldviewing

It’s good to be home for the break! I’m back in Chapel Hill after clearing out everything I owned from that little house on Friendly Ave. in Greensboro. That is the last time I hope to grace the door of that house. Earlier this week, I just announced to my housemates ‘I’m moving out on Wednesday’. I decided it wasn’t worth staying there anymore–not with the parties, drinking, substance abuse, and total immaturity in cleaning and consideration. I’ve put up with it so long without ANY concession or relent from them, and I really don’t have to be there anymore, I’m free to leave if I want. I have a year lease though, but my housemates say they have many friends who they can get to move in and take it over.

My grades are in. I got straight Bs across the board. It’s something I should be happy with, compared to the usual mix of As, Bs, and Cs I get. Better all Bs than some As and Cs, right? I don’t know… Although I think the grades are pretty good reflections of my work this semester (which has been more than any other semester before), I do think there are some papers I worked especially hard on that got A-s or Bs, that were totally A work. Oh well. So what does this mean now? As of Tuesday, I completed ALL requirements for my English department degree! I pretty much have a B.A. in English. Now all I need is enough credits to graduate, putting me in school for one more year. I sat down with a real sharp man in Academic Services and I came to the realization that, with the hours I have left to graduate, it would be absolute foolishness NOT to focus those hours into earning a Minor! So that’s what I’m going for now–a minor in Religion. Yeah I know that the department at UNC Greensboro is probably very crazy and that I’ll be grinding my teeth through a lot of classes–but why not? What else could be of as much value to me, even if I do have to sit through months of learning about false gods? It will be used to glorify the real Living God all the more, and to not worship him like the godless have. I tried to get into a Greek class, but the base of students wanting to take Greek is so small, they only offer the intro class in the Fall, not the Spring. Too bad!

Here’s a lark,

You scored as Reformed Evangelical. You are a Reformed Evangelical. You take the Bible very seriously because it is God’s Word. You most likely hold to TULIP and are sceptical about the possibilities of universal atonement or resistible grace. The most important thing the Church can do is make sure people hear how they can go to heaven when they die.

This was a pretty ridiculous test. Mostly because it had three choices on each issue: agree, disagree, or somewhere in between. Sometimes an issue is much more complex than that! Like, do you agree or disagree with the removal of troops in Iraq? Well when would you remove them? How many, all? Anyway, this test forced me to agree or disagree with such statements like ‘Preaching the Word is more important than worship’, when they are really the same thing if done correctly. I think I got the results I did by always answering Reformed to those kinds of questions, and also heavily favoring evangelism, making Wesleyanism my next highest score. Yes I’m sceptical of universal attonement (wasted work of Jesus) and resistable grace (which would not be grace). Although, I don’t understand the last portion of the blurb… if I’m a Reformed Evangelical, why would I say that the most important thing is for people to hear how they CAN go to heaven before they die? I want people to hear how they MUST worship the Living God, and leave it to the Lord whether they can or can’t.

Also interesting: the other people’s results that I saw had Emergent/Postmodern at the top. The interesting thing is, those with Emergent at the top also had Classic Liberal (which basically means heretic) a close second. hmmmmmm… is history trying to tell us something here?

Tonight I barely made it to Intervarsity Christian Fellowship on my campus. It hasn’t been such a good day. I have not felt God’s presence today, I have been feeling spiritually attacked, I have been feeling defeated and yielding to sin issues. All this, as it usually is, interspersed with powerful injections of the sermons I listen to on my iPod, essays I read, and verses I just meditate on. It’s on these days I feel like I’m… walking a line of absurdity and glory. One minute unleashing all sin, the next minute having the Lord beat it back down and chain it up again. Anyway, so it was 6:59, and Intervarsity starts at 7. I was watching TV, to my own shame, and wondered why should I even go? Certainly I shouldn’t rush over there, they never start on time. I considered not going because of how many times I’ve been disappointed by the speaker and their lack of boldness in even trying to open the Text and expound upon it, teach it. I am usually in the habit of going early and seeking out the one bringing the message, introducing myself and trying to encourage by telling them I am in prayer for them, and that I hope they will bring us a powerful message. If anything was going to make me go tonight, it was going to be to see some brothers and sisters and hopefully fellowship with them–but I held out hope that the one bringing a message would bring one of power, from the Text. I walked in as the singing was ending, and sat down with a really good brother, happy I did come, and happy to see him and just put my arm around him and say hi. I felt I was now prepared, now ready for God to do a work and I longed to hear him teach through someone bringing a good message.
There was no message though. It was one of those extended singing time meetings, with a 10 minute video from (you guessed it) Rob Bell.

Rob Bell is one of the main faces of the Emergent Church Movement. I don’t want to talk about Rob Bell too much until I get a chance to read his book, Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith, but I just want to examine a couple quotes from his interview on beliefnet.com, and excerpts I have been able to read of the book at that same website. Ron, a community member at challies.com, has written a really great article on this as well. I want to examine this because I know this movement has made a huge impression on my brothers and sisters in Intervarsity, and SO much so, it would be irresponsible not to examine this movement. I mean, even if I believed it was a revival and from the Spirit himself, I would still want to test it.

If it is true, if it is beautiful, if it is honorable, if it is right, then claim it. Because it is from God. - Velvet Elvis

If it is beautiful, is it true? Let’s not pull a John Keats here, beauty is a subjective thing, truth is not. I agree that if it’s true, it should be beautiful, but I heard true things when I was not a Christian that I did not find beautiful. I also heard some beautiful things that I thought were true, but were certainly not from God.

Last year some friends asked me to be the pastor for their wedding ceremony. They had been together for a while and decided to make it official and throw a huge weekend party, and they invited me to be a part of it. They said they didn’t want any Jesus or God or Bible or religion to be talked about. But they did want me to make it really spiritual. The bride said it in her own great way, “Rob, do that thing you do. Make it really profound and deep and spiritual!”

Now we should know that there is no spiritual life outside of Jesus, so trying to be spiritual without Jesus is like trying to be driving without a car. And of all people Rob Bell should know this, nevertheless, not only did he agree to do the wedding, but goes on to call it holy.

So we decided to meet the morning of the wedding to actually plan the ceremony. It was a stunningly beautiful day, and we met on a cliff overlooking a lake in the midst of a thick forest. The wind was blowing the tops of the trees way up above us, the sun was coming through in yellow-and-white beams, and at one point an eagle flew overhead. I kept waiting for someone to cue the orchestra.

Anyway, I asked my friends why they wanted to be married in such a natural, organic setting, since it was four hours from where we all live. They talked about the beauty of nature, its peacefulness, and the way they fell in love in this part of the state. Then the groom said something I will never forget: “Something holds this all together.”

So then I asked them if they thought it was a mistake that they had found each other. And they said, no, they believed they were meant to be together and it was no accident that they met and fell in love. I then asked them, “Do you think whatever it is that holds all this together is the same thing that has brought you two together?” They said yes. Same thing.

So I said that maybe what makes their relationship so meaningful to them is that it’s a picture of something much bigger. The same force that brought them together holds the whole world together. I then asked, “So today, your wedding is about something far more significant than just the two of you becoming husband and wife, isn’t it?”

They then said they would call this glue, this force, “God.” - Velvet Elvis

Rob Bell, I want to ask you as a brother how could you be doing this? Where you could be honoring God in the way he set forth he must be honored, namely, through Jesus Christ, you infer that God is a glue and a force, and is actually at the center of a relationship between people who have no fellowship with him? To me, this is like saying that Thor, the god of Norse mythology, could be at the center of my relationship with my good brother Nate (the brother I sat with tonight), holding it together. Since I openly oppose and resent Thor, to say he was at the center of something he’s not would be a great dishonor to Thor and not even have any truth in it.

I mean, Rob Bell, do you even believe that love is possible between any people who are not Christians? From beliefnet.com interview:

It [the message of Jesus] is the reconciliation of all things. It is the putting back together of the whole universe how God originally intended it to be.

So things now are not how God intended them to be? I agree that God intendS for things to be better in the future, with the new heaven and the new earth, and it will happen because God intends for it to. For God to intend something to be better does not mean that at present it is not the way he intends. You could even say that the fact that God intends to fix what was broken necessitates that he intended for it to be broken in the first place, or else God would be less than God. Colossians 1:16 says he is the ‘firstborn of creation’, yet we know that Jesus was never born? In what sense is firstborn referring? I believe it means he was the first dream, the first idea, the first laid plan of creation. We know that Jesus was contracted by the Father in covenant to do a work before creation, the fall, sin ever existed. That does not provide the possibility for sin not to exist, and I affirm that right now is exactly as God intended things to be.

These are just initial concerns I have, and only a narrow scope of them. If I understand the ECM correctly (which I don’t even say I really do, but I try to), it is a movement to repaint the Christian faith and represent it in a fresh way. In the next few weeks I’ll be reading as much about this as I can, because I want to know if this is the work the Spirit is doing in this country, or I want to know if this stems from an attitude that is not renewal of the mind and submission to the Text and something that many of my brothers and sisters need to be challenged against falling into. Right now, I have to believe more toward the latter, based on what I have seen